A pair of young girls were ogling a pack of “Ladybug” fireworks — red and black polka-dotted balls in colorful packaging. Nearby, a father and daughter were pushing his cart that was nearly toppling over with fireworks from Mean Gene’s tent at 6506 N.E. Highway 99 in Hazel Dell.
The tent, next door to a Muchas Gracias restaurant and not to be confused with Gene’s wholesale lot just down the road, was bustling with people before sales began at noon Thursday.
The few days of retail chaos — between June 28 and July 4 — are a thrill despite the stress for owner Gene Marlow, who has been operating the stand for more than 30 years.
Clad in blue jeans and T-shirt, Marlow struggled to tear himself away from coordinating with staff as they prepared for the avalanche of customers in order to do interviews with local journalists observing the opening-day affair.
“We’ve been growing every year we’ve been in Clark County,” he said, as gray skies gave way to sunshine, to the delight of entrepreneurs setting up a snow cone stand beside the tent.
Marlow was born and raised in Portland and stumbled into the business of fireworks while a grocery store clerk at the now-extinct Kienow’s supermarket in the 1980s. A co-worker there offered him an opportunity to run a stand.
“So, I took a week of vacation and ran a fireworks stand — and made about three times as much money in that week as I normally made being a grocery clerk,” he said.
The stand started in 1985 in North Portland. During the “off season” he, perhaps ironically, works as a firefighter for the Camas-Washougal Fire Department.
“I’m very thankful for my job as a firefighter, but this (the fireworks stand) is something I’ve been doing for a long time. We try to teach people to be safe; we try to teach them how to use these things,” he said.
Two years ago, Marlow roped in Jeff Martizia, a friend of the family, to help manage the tent. When asked what it’s like working with a man named “Mean Gene,” Martizia said the moniker isn’t a real indication of Marlow’s personality.
“The name Mean Gene is like a joke, because it’s 180 (degrees) to who he is. He’s the nicest guy on the planet,” Martizia said, adding that Marlow gives back to the community. Marlow said he has donated to local wrestling groups and senior graduation parties.
One of the biggest obstacles to his job, Marlow said, is local politics. Fireworks have spurred an intense debate recently that resulted in new restrictions on when they can be lawfully discharged.
“It only takes a handful of bad apples to influence the elected officials to take it away from everybody,” he said. “There’s a lot of money that goes directly into the community that sometimes they forget about.”
Marlow said that selling fireworks goes well beyond the week at the tent.
“It is a lot more year-round than you would imagine. We are looking at fireworks throughout the year. We pick out the ones we like best, and that’s what we order. They make them for us and ship them to us, and then we distribute them to our locations,” he said. Mean Gene’s has eight locations listed on its website. “We have to get our order in for next year probably by the end of October.”
Those products include items with silly names, like “Shark Tornado” (a play off of the low-budget cult film on the SyFy channel), plenty of patriotic-themed items, like ” ‘Merica” and “Real American Hero,” as well as items that allude to battle and gunfire such as “Bullet Storm,” “Gettysburg” and “Wild Wild West.”
And these items aren’t all cheap. While there are, of course, plenty of the lower-tier $5 items — sparklers and the like — the big stuff is what draws people in. Especially Oregonians from as far as six hours away who aren’t able to legally purchase such items in their home state.
Jerred Freerksen traveled from Myrtle Point in southwest Oregon to Mean Gene’s because he said they have good deals and “they’re always nice to me, they treat me good.” Trying to push his cart full of pyrotechnics without a spill (and his 10-year-old daughter hauling one that wouldn’t fit), Freerksen had no idea how much he was spending and wouldn’t disclose where he plans to fire them off.
“Depends on where it’s allowed,” he said.
Marlow can’t quite put his finger on why so many people enjoy what ultimately amounts to spending a lot of money for a few moments of excitement.
“I don’t know if there’s an intrinsic, caveman-type burning thing that we love fire and fireworks, but they’re pretty spectacular and exciting,” he said. “People love to cut loose.”
Marlow stays in the business so everyone else can enjoy the holiday. He hasn’t observed a Fourth of July show in more than 30 years, he said.
“I mean it is stressful, it is very difficult to do all the business you’re going to do for the whole year in one week. But obviously it’s lucrative enough that I keep doing it,” Marlow said.
